Aivia Software

Overlay Manipulator

Owned by Aiden Maloney-Bertelli (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 12, 2019Version comment
3 min read

The Overlay Manipulator lets you hide/show and change the format of the scale bar and image metadata that are displayed in the Image Viewer.

Interface

The Overlay Manipulator is found in the 3D Tools tab in the (Pre-version 12) Analysis Panel. Go to 3D View to show the 3D Tools tab, and click on the Overlay Manipulator icon to launch the tool. The Overlay Manipulator interface is shown below, along with descriptions of the available options.

Overlay Manipulator GUI

Using Overlay Manipulator

To launch the Overlay Manipulator, click on the 3D Tools tab in the Analysis Panel in Aivia, and select the Overlay Manipulator from the 3D Tools toolbar. This will open the Overlay Manipulator interface.


The overlay features that you may modify with the Overlay Manipulator are the scale bar and metadata (see the "Overlay features: metadata and scale bar" figure). The metadata block includes the image name, image dimensions, and current frame number (when applicable).

On this page:


Change the format of an overlay feature

To change the format of an overlay feature, first select the feature you would like to modify by either clicking on it or selecting it from the top menu in the Overlay Manipulator interface. Then, you may hide/show the feature by clicking the Un/Hide Overlay Feature icon / . You may also change the font face and font size (see the "Overlay Manipulator GUI" figure for where to do this). Click or drag the slider on the right side of the Overlay Manipulator's color picker to specify the desired hue of the overlay feature. Click anywhere on the main, large display in the color picker to specify the saturation and brightness. Alternatively, you can specify a color by entering the hexadecimal color code in the color-picker textbox. 

Hide and show overlay features from the View menu 

While in any View Mode, click View > Toggle Metadata Overlay to hide/show the metadata. Click View > Toggle Scale Overlay to hide/show the scale bar.

Overlay features: metadata and scale bar


Adjust the scale bar length

When Scale Bar is selected as the overlay feature to modify, the option to change the length of the scale bar is active. Drag the slider, use the up/down arrows, or use the textbox to specify the scale bar length (see the "Overlay Manipulator GUI" figure). In the Overlay Manipulator interface, the length of the scale bar is measured as a percentage of the Image Viewer width; however, scale bars of only certain lengths are displayed in the Image Viewer, so the length option that most closely aligns with the specified width percentage is used.

Move an overlay feature

Click and drag either of the overlay features to wherever you would like to place them in the Image Viewer. While you click and hold one of the overlay features, yellow boxes are shown in all four corners of the Image Viewer. Drag an overlay feature to one of these yellow boxes, and release the mouse button when the box turns red to snap the feature to the corner.

Image credits

Stegmaier J, Mikut R. (2017) Fuzzy-based propagation of prior knowledge to improve large-scale image analysis pipelines. PLoS One. 12(11):e0187535. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0187535

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